bivium

English

Etymology

Latin bivium (“a place with two ways”).

Noun

bivium (plural bivia)

  1. (zoology) One side of an echinoderm, including a pair of ambulacra, in distinction from the opposite side (trivium), which includes three ambulacra.

Derived terms

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “bivium”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Latin

Etymology

Substantive from bivius (“having two ways”), which is derived from via (“path, road”).

Pronunciation

Noun

bivium n (genitive biviī or bivī); second declension

  1. A place with or where two ways meet; fork in the road, crossroad.
  2. A pair of alternative means or methods.

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter).

Case Singular Plural
Nominative bivium bivia
Genitive biviī
bivī1		 biviōrum
Dative biviō biviīs
Accusative bivium bivia
Ablative biviō biviīs
Vocative bivium bivia

1Found in older Latin (until the Augustan Age).

Descendants
  • Italian: bivio

References
  • bivium in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
  • Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
    • Hercules at the cross-roads, between virtue and vice: Hercules in trivio, in bivio, in compitis
  • “bivium”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
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